Highways and Byways
by irnan
Summary: The road can go ever on and on for all eternity as far as Dean's concerned - he just really, really doesn't want to be on it anymore.


_This is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** Written for littlealex' birthday, who asked for early S2 nostalgic-y stuff. She got this instead. _

**Highways and Byways**

_Nebraska_

"I told you not to do it," Sam says mercilessly.

"Shut up," you growl. Generally, hangover-related teasing is a Winchester given, a law of nature, but this one...

"I mean, seriously. Of all the dumb-ass things to do..."

"Sam..."

"You weren't even in a position to get laid."

Frustrated snarl and an "I don't care," hissed out between grated teeth. That one actually _hurt_.

"I noticed. That thing with Jo..."

"You know, Sam, I really can't imagine why you think the good opinion of some cheerleader in an apron would matter to me," you snap, raising your head off the back of the seat for the first time that morning, and immediately regretting it. Ow.

Sam drums his thumbs on the steering wheel – a nervous habit you both picked up from Dad – and doesn't say anything, mouth quirking in... what, regret? What, does he think you're gonna start an epic romance with the girl? She's barely outta high school. And you weren't lying when you said her Mom was kinda scary.

Course, that was before it turned out Dad killed her father.

"Could she be telling the truth?" Sam asks softly, sounding a little afraid. Well, at least he's ditched the pissiness.

Your aching brain starts up long enough to consider his question. It's telling that, even after your little heart-to-heart with Ellen on the subject of nursery fires and special abilities, the first thing he assumes is that she was probably lying. Winchesters don't rely on nobody but Winchesters.

You think of Dad, of how swallowed-up he could get by things, of his flat determination to protect you, of his many secrets that you carry now in your very blood. You think of the Marine tat on his arm and the way he was always so insistent that _you don't kill people, Dean. Not ever. That's not a part of your job, you understand? _

And then, inexplicably, you think of Gordon Walker and the light in his eyes when Lenore screamed, and you think maybe you _have_ begun to understand, at last.

"Yes," you say harshly. "I think she could've been."

Long long silence then.

_Iowa_

There's a sign coming up by the roadside, looming large in the distance at the entry to a gas-station-cum-diner. You sit up a bit and lean forwards, trying to make it out, and beside you, the roll of Sam's eyes is almost audible.

"Iowa," he says.

"We headed west?"

"Into the sunset," Sam agrees, putting as much melodrama as he can manage into the words.

"But I didn't _wanna_ head west," you protest as he turns the Impala into the station. Sammy likes to fill up on gas whenever he can; you tend to stop when you sense your baby's half-an-hour away from dying.

"Too bad. West is the direction we're going in."

"See, this is why I don't let you drive," you grumble, sliding your sunglasses on and climbing unsteadily out of the car.

"Dude. You don't let me drive because you're paranoid, possessive, and pernicated."

"I thought I told you to cancel that Word-of-the-Month prescription. We can't afford it."

"We can't afford your benders, either," Sam says. "I might have to start rationing you."

In a perfect world, your glare alone would be enough to fry him where he stands. Unfortunately, the world you currently find yourself forced to reside in is anything but perfect.

"Dude, don't you ever shut up? Dad always lets me have hangovers in peace."

The words hang in the air between you, a huge, hideous beast in a small living room that lumbers around and falls over with almighty crashes and knocks all the furniture into rubble. Sam's mouth is pinched and his eyes lowered, watching the gas gauge like it's showing the national lottery numbers.

It's all you can do to walk calmly and steadily in a straight line to the men's room, and you don't come out until you've puked your guts out, until you're kneeling on the filthy floor dry-heaving, the retches tearing at your throat and chest.

_Illinois_

Chicago still holds bad memories.

No, that's not true. Chicago holds memories that time has made bad. Like George Lucas retconning the original _Star Wars_ trilogy to fit in with those crappy sequels.

You end up driving through Springfield just to avoid the city, and come across a haunting while you're down there. That stops Sam's whining about the longer route quite effectively, and all that's left for you to do is put on your mysterious older-brother-knows-all smile and pretend you knew about the hunt from the start.

It's not as if you really knew where you were going, anyway. You're following in the footsteps of evil because you no longer have any other compass, staggering along in the dark in a vain attempt to find your way back to that straight, well-kept blacktop you were cruisin' down until a semi hit you sideways and knocked you off the road.

_Indiana_

Indiana is boring as fuck. More so, because there is some entertainment value even in bad sex, although admittedly more in hindsight than at the moment it's happening to you.

"You ain't lost, are you suga?" the blowsy waitress in the diner says. Sam's in the men's room, and you're paying the bill. She leans over the counter a little, and your eyes drop of their own accord, a knee-jerk reaction to that long-familiar movement that women have been making in front of you for almost as long as you've been aware they do not, in fact, have cooties. She's maybe fifteen years older than you are, hair brittle and brown with repeated dying. Watching her face is like studying deep cracks in plaster.

"Depends on your definition of the word," you tell her, and calmly toss the receipt away, her number on the back plain for all to see.

_ Ohio_

Thank God for Cincinnati. Where would the world be without its trademark chilli?

Another haunting beckons. It's a graveyard this time; they're renovating an old section of a church, and woke the highly irritable spirit of a two-hundred-year-old priest, a certain Father O'Malley. Probably forgot to give the guy his Last Rites. He's pretty harmless, actually, and very entertaining, crotchety and cynical. When you tell him he's dead, he spends three hours (three hours!) in the current priest's office, striding noiselessly up and down in the dim light of your flashlights and recounting every single tale he's ever heard in Confession while Sam tries to get him to move on.

You're sprawled happily in the priest's suspiciously comfortable chair, feet up on the desk, trying hard not to laugh.

"You have no idea how much of a relief that was," O'Malley says at last. "Confession is the worst part of my job. Imagine hearing all that and then just sitting there like a fool, telling the bastards to recite a few _Hail Marys_ and all will be forgiven."

"That's gotta suck," you say cheerfully. He fixes you with a dark look.

"Young man," he says, "I am the first to admit I am unacquainted with the current idiom, but you seem inappropriately cheerful about this particular subject."

You shift a bit and cough under that intense gaze – even if it is a dead one. "Sorry. Father."

"Hm."

It takes another hour before Sam convinces him to move on and let you both burn his bones. You're kinda sorry to see the guy go. It's been a long time since you last came across a harmless spirit; there was that one in the diner in Texas, the lady who died when a bunch of kids came in at midnight and literally gave her a heart attack. But even so, _they might start out harmless but they sure as Hell never end up that way,_ and Christ, that's the first time you've thought of Dad all day.

The realisation makes you sick to your stomach with guilt.

_West Virginia_

You're making your way quite happily through the backroads of the state, more or less parallel to the Interstate headed northwest when you pick up on reports of a mysterious incident involving a few high school girls, a break-in in the local town's "magic store" and the deaths of several pets and injury of one of the girls.

Witches. Worse, teenage witches, who think that oujia boards and summonings and trying to move shit with your mind is not only totally cool, but completely safe. It's like no matter how much they profess to believe, there's a little core of scepticism deep inside them that lets them take the sort of risks no true witch, no matter how powerful and in control of herself, would ever dare.

The owner of the "magic store" that was burgled is dark-haired, pretty, ten years older than you and a real, powerful, white witch.

"I wouldn't sell them what they wanted," she says with a shrug when you ask her about the break-in. You didn't bother giving her an alias; that would be insulting.

"What was that?" Sam asks. He's nervous for some reason, keeps squirming and glancing at you.

Maggie looks amused. "Books. And ingredients."

"For spells."

"For black magic. I blame Neve Campbell."

"She's a danger to society," you agree, and Maggie's laugh rings out, warm and clear and comforting. You've heard a laugh a little like that before, but you can't quite place it.

By the next morning, it's more than obvious the girls managed to summon a Black Dog. Dispatching it isn't really a problem, although it tears your arm apart. Sam patches you up awkwardly with his hand still in its cast, but you refuse to go see a doctor. It's late, and an obvious animal attack will only get you questioned by the police, especially as they're already on the lookout for the beast that killed Marissa Jackson.

You go round to Maggie's once Sam's asleep, give her the good news. She doesn't seem to mind being called out of bed at just past one in the morning, even if it makes you shuffle your feet and cough when you realise how late it actually is. Puts the kettle on and forces you to drink some wussy soothing tea that tastes like home as she re-does Sam's bandages.

It's maybe two hours later that you hesitantly suggest maybe you should possibly be leaving sometime? But Maggie laughs her warm laugh and invites you into her bed, easy and natural, without the slightest trace of the drunken awkwardness or coquetry that usually accompany your... your amorous encounters.

Her kisses taste like mint and her hands are warm, ample curves against you soft but arms steady and strong. She brings up coffee the next morning, says goodbye without words, and you turn up at the motel with her scent still on you and a sense of peace and gratitude that she and you know perfectly well won't last but are determined to enjoy while it does.

_Still West Virginia. Just a little more... west._

"Screaming Jenny? _Screaming Jenny?_ Are you _serious_?"

Sam glares. "It's the only one that fits."

"But this is awesome!"

"It's ridiculous. We keep runnin' into all these incredibly famous ghosts – Bloody Mary, the Hookman, Screaming Jenny – who's next, Blackbeard?"

"Note to self, stay away from North Carolina," you say cheerfully.

Finding poor Jenny's unmarked grave is an exercise in drudgery. She appears every year on the train tracks near Harper's Ferry on the night of her death, a pathetic figure wreathed in flames and screaming out for the help that never came to her in life – and on her last anniversary, just last week, the charred and mangled bodies of three kids, only just identified this morning, were found on the tracks. Police were puzzled by the apparent manner of their deaths: there was no evidence to indicate that anyone else had set the kids on fire, yet it was a very painful and stupidly melodramatic way to commit mass suicide. Also, the coroner insisted the kids had suffered some pretty major damage besides the burns – injuries consistent with getting hit by an oncoming train, as poor Jenny was a hundred years ago.

"Talk about a terrible lot in life," you grunt between strikes at the hard ground, noise of the shovel too loud in the darkness. "First you live like a church mouse, then get set on fire, and then you get hit by a fuckin' train! Jesus."

Sam makes a noise you'll take for assent until proven otherwise. "Stuff like that is where the idea came from that we all go to a better place when we die."

"Do we?" you ask suddenly, standing up and staring at him. "Do you really think we do?"

He stares. "Yeah. Yeah, man, I do. Or else what's the point?"

The shovel shivers in your hands as you drive it down hard as you can into the ground, ignoring the implied question in Sam's answer. Finally, he has to put it into quiet, hesitant words.

"What about you?"

You dig in silence for a few more minutes and then, just as he's given up on getting a reply, say, "No harps and angels, that's for damn sure. I don't know, Sammy. Rest, I guess. Eternal sleep? Just... just quiet, and peace, and – and nothingness."

"No Mom? No Jess? No Dad?"

"No. Not literally."

"Then how?"

The question becomes obsolete when you hit the rotted wood of Jenny's coffin. It feels wrong to have to burn her all over again, but when you're done, she should be free. Free of hurt, of pain, of poverty and hunger. Free of the ceaseless agony of those other inexorable flames.

Free to leave. Free to rest.

_Pennsylvania_

You meander into Pennsylvania easy and slow in a way that feels accidental but isn't; there's a Woman in White haunting a backroad not far from York. Two guys gone already, and you can't help but feel that it was mostly good riddance to 'em.

Jobs all over. Every time you turn your back there's another one appearing out of the woodwork. Not that you're complaining or anything.

It's frighteningly easy to slip away and let Sammy do all the research. You used to check up on him every now and then; he's been out of the game a while, after all, and it's been longer than that since you last permitted yourself to rely on anyone but Dad. Hell, at twenty you would have fallen over laughing if anyone had ever suggested that Sam would one day step up and take his share of the responsibility for your jobs in the way he has been lately.

Now if you can just get him to share in the financing the damn things as well...

But he's quiet and withdrawn and doesn't talk much for most of the time, obviously remembering the last time you went after one of these bitches. It doesn't bother you half as much; you hunted a few with Dad while Sammy was at Stanford, so they're just another job to you.

If you let yourself get all emo and teary over the inevitable memories connected to every job you do, you'd never get anything done.

_Maryland_

"Anthony Giles," you say cheerfully over breakfast, brandishing a newspaper. "He's a Baltimore lawyer. Working late at his office. Check it out."

Sam takes the paper. "His throat was slit but the room was clean. Huh. No DNA, no prints."

"Keep reading. It gets better."

"Security cameras failed to capture footage of the assailant," Sam continues. "So I'm thinking either someone tampered with the tapes, or it's an invisible killer."

You can't help but grin. The East Coast is always full of creepy-ass goings-on. It's terrific. "My favourite kind. What do you think, Scully? Wanna check it out?"

"I'm not Scully," Sammy says indignantly, tone of voice the same one he still uses for stuff like _Dean shut up I'm not a girl for liking Matchbox 20!_ "You're Scully."

The cheek of the kid. Who does he think he is? "No, I'm Mulder. You're a red-headed woman."

And with that pithy reply, you're off.


End file.
